Eternal Wind
by Kaneta
Summary: Ganon's thoughts just before the final battle in Wind Waker. One-shot.


_Disclaimer: I don't own Ganondorf. Nor would I--poor man._

_Author's Note:_

_This is an edited version of the fic that I posted an embarrassingly long time ago. Ganon's thoughts, as he waits for Link to arrive, just before the final battle in Wind Waker._

_Enjoy._

**ETERNAL WIND**

The children have returned to me again.

It has been hundreds of years since I saw them last, Zelda, and Link--and I have seen now in their eyes that neither of them remember me. It will be as it always is, then. There will be battle. There will be pain. And perhaps they will win, and perhaps I will win, and it will not matter, because they are always reborn and I cannot die.

Would they be more like me, I wonder, if--like me--they remembered everything? Remembered the burning wind, the blinding sun, in a desert that has seen neither air nor sunlight in hundreds of years? Growing, learning, experiencing betrayal from every quarter, but knowing that in the end it will all come 'round again? Knowing that there is no end to the suffering? I think that they would not hate me if they knew. They hate me, in their righteous way, because they are such innocents. They are ignorant of the world and her cruelty. To them, I am the cruellest thing imaginable--and that thought makes me smile, for a moment. I was never so innocent. I envy them their blindness.

Zelda is sleeping still. I covered her warmly with the blankets, and built up the fire, so that the wind in this drafty place will not chill her. But it was unnecessary. This new Zelda, this new child, is accustomed to the wind. I doubt very much that I shall ever be.

But if I succeed, I shall not have to be.

And if they succeed, I will never have the time to learn.

Either way, it will be a good thing.

I wonder what it must be like for her, to be reborn again and again, innocent of all the mistakes and heroics of her previous selves. It was once that Link was the same way--but I have seen this boy, and looked in his eyes, and not found my ancient enemy. He is a different soul. My oldest enemy has freed himself from the cycle, and will return no more. And perhaps that gives me hope. It is a mockery that even as I am, I am capable of hope.

Would this new Link laugh if he knew what I hope for? The thought of his laughter is like acid to me. It burns. But I think also that he might not laugh...and I do not know if that hurts me worse than the thought that he might.

All my life, I have been denied what I sought. There was very little beauty in my homeland--and what beauty there I loved, shriveled and died through no fault of my own. The desert ruins and withers what it touches. That is its way. The only beauty that lasts there is sharp as crystal, and illusory as a sunset. Loveliness, in the Gerudo lands, often comes in the form of a jewel-scaled adder, or a delicate shelf of sandstone that, should you step on it, will throw you to your death. If you manage to touch beauty, you bleed for your impertinence. Gerudo children learn swiftly not to reach for beautiful things.

Can you imagine what it was like to grow up so close to a land of softness and green welcome, and yet have to fight my own land every day and every night for my survival? My parents died, and left me to the will of two sour old women--I do not blame them, though, for my unhappiness, for my inability to ever be content. I think that perhaps the Goddesses intended me to be this way, because someone has to fill this role. If it was not me, it would be another, perhaps Nabooru, my old playmate--it is best that it is me. I am good at playing the villain. And I have had so much practice. So very many years.

Years that I remember, complete, untarnished by fading memory. My mind has never faltered. I remember what my enemies took from me, I remember years that they somehow removed from ever having existed. I know that once I held Hyrule in my hand, and I know also that it was...not quite what I wished it was. My holding it tainted it, made it less than it was on its own. But I cannot stay away. I need it, and it is so deep a part of me now that the thought of being forever sundered from it pains me as nothing else has in half a millennia.

Zelda stirs a little now in her sleep. I wonder what she dreams. She is smiling, a little, a smile without malice or doubt. If I wanted, I could reach out and touch her dreams, taste them, see what is the happiness she finds in them. But in doing so--as in grasping Hyrule--I would make them less than they are. I shall let her be. She has been hurt a thousand thousand times by me, and I tire of causing her injury.

The wind...

It blows...

Link is nearing. I can feel him coming, my old enemy, my only friend. My bright brother. My son, perhaps, if things had been different. Would I be proud to have Link as my son? I might. He would not be proud if I were his father. Not as I am now.

As I was? Perhaps.

I could have taught him so many things.

Would we have lain in wait for wild horses, the year he became a young man? Would he have learned the secrets of hiding in plain sight, and finding water in a drought? Would I have taught him the dances of my people, would he know the year-songs that welcome Spring or frighten away the Winter? Would he have loved me?

There is no room for anything as soft as love in this windshattered world, any more than there was in the desert. I cannot remember what it felt like…cannot remember my mother's face. Only the way she smelled, like cactus flowers and warm earth. And I remember her strong brown arms, and her clever hands--all else is lost. I was so young when she died. There is much of death in the Gerudo lands, which is why we have never had to fight to keep them...and now, those too are lost beneath the unforgiving sea.

So much water in one place seems alien to me still. It is wrong, so much water that cannot even be drunk. What good is it? Like all the gifts from the Goddesses, it is nothing but mockery. Poison to cover a land of beauty...how very like them.

The Triforce on my hand resonates now. He is close. He is coming.

Why is there no excitement in me? This will be the last battle. The very last, one way or another. Never again will I be forced to face them, and see burning in his eyes the reflection of what I might have been.

Perhaps that is why I can be so honest with myself now.

If I win--these two will not die. I swear it now to myself that they will live, regardless. I will find some place for them.

Link is near. I can almost hear his heartbeat. His anger makes the very air sting.

He deserves to live. He has fought hard and well, against pain that one so young should not be forced to battle. I will give him the life that I denied my oldest enemy, that soul that has somehow escaped, leaving a place for this new boy. But I must have Hyrule back. I must feel her breeze on my face again. I must taste the water in the air, smell the revelation of green plants, hear the singing of birds that need not hide in cliff walls until after the sun has set. Will the children like it? Will they wonder over green grass, snowcapped mountains, the sight of an eagle flying? Will the deer of the forests fascinate them? Would that I could see it all through their new eyes! What a gift it will be for them, to see such beauty. What a treasure, to experience it for the first time when they are old enough to understand the wonder of it.

I suppose that they might feel something of what I felt, the first time I walked through the fields of Hyrule and did not need to fear for snakes or scorpions. That joy, so sharp that it was also pain, that wonder, so overwhelming that it was almost fear. The knowledge that nothing I saw would ever, ever be the same again, filtered as it would be through the memory of this. The understanding that home would never be enough again. That I had to have what I saw, had to be a part of it. The first time I left Hyrule, only seventeen, in the caravan with Koume and Kotake, it broke my heart. They couldn't understand, having no hearts of their own, but it was the source of all beauty, this jewel-bright land. Nothing else would ever be as beautiful to me.

Nothing ever has.

I am too tired to fight this battle again, after this last time. He will live. But I never will need to fight him again...

One way or the other...

There.

He is here.

It is time for the battle. The last. The end of it, for all time, the final chance to set it right.

It may be that I will win, and walk again the fields of Hyrule, unnoticed by grazing deer, kissed by only the gentlest breeze and shaded by the ancient forests...

Or--Goddesses, I can not even hope.

Perhaps I will finally be allowed to die?


End file.
